


under a desert moon, under the desert stars

by ninemoons42



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Family Feels, Family Reunions, Force Ghost Obi-Wan Kenobi, Force Ghost Qui-Gon Jinn, Force Ghosts, Gen, Inspired by Music, M/M, Multi, OT3, Post-Mission, Rey Kenobi, Rey is Obi-Wan's granddaughter, jedistormpilot
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-22
Updated: 2016-05-23
Packaged: 2018-06-09 23:20:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6928333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rey's first steps in the Force place her onto the path to her family: specifically, to her grandfather.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. hello from the other side

**Author's Note:**

> If you've been reading my [JediStormPilot Snippets](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5493311), then you've read the first three chapters of this ongoing series, in which I expound on the idea of Rey being a descendant of Obi-Wan Kenobi.

_Consider the Force. It flows around us. It binds us. It links living beings to each other, and at the same time it links the living to those who have gone, and to those things that are not alive._

A different voice whispering to her, wise and gentle and -- old, Rey thinks. The years of war and the years of exile have aged Luke Skywalker, but he’s not like this, he doesn’t feel like a tender warmth that settles very carefully around her shoulders. 

A voice she’s heard once, in the tumult of Finn leaving her to run to the Outer Rim, as far away from the First Order as he could get: a voice bound to the weight of a lightsaber, to the nicks and rough spots dotted up and down the hilt.

She keeps her eyes closed and her palms open, though she desperately wants to reach out and find -- what? There must be a being speaking to her, nothing like the disembodied whispers in her memory, the voices of the ones who left her behind -- 

_No, little, I am sorry -- I’m not your father._

“Then tell me who you are,” Rey murmurs.

 _I knew your mother’s father, your grandfather. I was his Master, but I cannot take credit for the ideal that he became._ A quiet, rueful laugh. _Though I have to say, I suppose some of the things I tried to teach him eventually stuck. As stubborn a being as any other, I suppose he had the right of it. I, too, was stubborn._

“Who are you?”

 _Consider the Force,_ that voice says, again, and she sighs and sinks into that ghostly warmth, lets it settle deeper than her skin, lets it flow into her own senses, until she feels a distant tug.

Careful, careful. She reaches for that presence, draws it closer, as gentle as holding on to grains of sand -- 

Deeper, deeper into the Force. It isn’t quite free-fall. It’s like teetering at the top of a towering dune, with a sturdy sand-sledge beneath her; it’s falling carefully forward into rapid motion.

The sensation of a hand clasping hers.

_That’s it, little. Open your eyes._

An outline of shivering shimmering blue. Long hair tied back neatly, a kindly face, and, oddly, the same clothes she often saw on other scavengers on Jakku. Sand-colored material, a short cloak that fell to the being’s knees and concealed everything except his boots. 

“Hello,” Rey whispers, and she’s alone on the _Millennium Falcon_ because Chewbacca is staying with the General. She’s alone, and there’s no need to speak softly, but -- there are other presences on this ship. It would be rude to disturb them.

 _Pleased to meet you. I am Qui-Gon Jinn._

“Did you spend time in the desert? You’re -- you’re dressed like me,” Rey says, quietly.

_I’ve been to a few deserts. But I was born in a city, a city that grew until it took over an entire planet. Coruscant. Have you traveled there?_

She shakes her head.

 _I understand it would be a dangerous place for one such as you at this time, little._

“My name is Rey,” she says. “And I’m not _little_.”

 _Ah. My apologies. You are a padawan, are you not? And there is only one Master alive at this time. You are Luke Skywalker’s student._ As she watches, he seems to gather his cloak around himself. _Might I sit?_

Rey nods, and slides over to the side to make room. There’s just enough space in her bunk for the two of them to fit, and it’s strange, because she can see the creases in the bedding but she can’t feel the weight of the being sitting calmly next to her.

_He is afraid, and he is -- in his way -- also determined. He knows what he needs to do; he is only held back by his past. I do not wish to make light of that past. But -- he needs to let go. He needs to move forward._

“I’m not the chance he’s looking for,” Rey says, quietly. 

_See it from a different perspective,_ Qui-Gon Jinn says. _As the Force is ever-flowing, so must we, its dedicated ones, examine ourselves constantly. We must adapt. Find the balance for every moment. So he must move forward, and so must you, under his tutelage._

“Find the balance. But what if it isn’t in me? What if the balance I want is in others?” 

She gets a quiet chuckle in response. _You have already determined it so, it seems. And -- I cannot gainsay you. I do not live your life, I do not know your past, I do not understand your needs. Still: there is the Code. It worked for many of us._

“Did it work for you?” 

More laughter. _Your grandfather would know this from very, very personal experience: not always._

“My grandfather,” Rey says, wonderingly. She thinks back to reading about the Old Republic, to reading about the Jedi. This being’s name. 

_You are Obi-Wan Kenobi’s granddaughter,_ Qui-Gon Jinn says. _You are as strong in the Force as he ever was. And for you to be alive requires him to turn away from the Code, as I did when I needed to._

“So I was a mistake.”

 _Never._

She nearly recoils at the quiet strength of the word. 

Again that tender warmth on her shoulders. _Obi-Wan cherished his beloved and his daughter, and had he lived to meet you he would have cherished you as well._

“So why was I left behind?” She should be angry, she should be shouting -- but she wants Finn and Poe by her side, and that’s all, and they are out on a series of recon missions and she desperately, desperately misses them. She wants to reach out to them -- she touches the palm of her hand to the cold bulkheads of the _Falcon_ and strains toward them.

And she spins dizzily through space, she careens down hyperspace lanes. Slipping through her fingers is the feeling of silver-streaked curls and the texture of a many-times-mended jacket. She can almost hear the familiar beeping of an astromech droid, the whirring blur of orange trim on the move -- 

She crashes back into herself. Still in her bunk. The _Falcon_ ’s walls close around her but they do not confine her. The presence next to her, kind and -- she knows she’s not supposed to feel _pride_ but she wants to laugh because he looks like he’s just been trod upon by a happabore.

 _This is not a situation that I am familiar with,_ Qui-Gon Jinn says, eventually. _Therefore I will not presume to give you advice. I should want to learn from you, were I more than a lingering image in the Force._

“My -- my grandfather,” Rey says, after a moment. “Can he do what you’re doing now?”

 _I think that with time he will come to you._

“You mean you’ll make him appear to me.”

That gets her a brief smile. Startling to see such an impish expression on such a venerable face.

Even after he fades gently away she still remembers that smile.


	2. must have called a thousand times

Blue, just at the edge of her vision.

Not the same blue as the softly fringed flowers on their delicate climbing vine. Spiral green looping and twining about a makeshift X-shape of old starfighter struts and parts and color-fraying cables. Not the same blue as the gloves that she wears on her hands at Poe’s insistence, because he knows the need to get into the rich soil and touch the slick little wriggling bodies of grubs and worms but he also knows about the acidic components of the planet itself. Some of the beings on the base have to wear rebreather masks just to cross from one building to the other: acid in the air and acid in the soil, and he doesn’t want Rey to get her hands burned and blistered.

The blue at the edge of her vision makes her feel like wistful wishes scoured away by whistling sand, and she thinks her heart aches with sympathy, and she turns her head to look: but the blue presence eludes her. Translucent panels trussed and bolted together. Finn had told her about the name for a place like this: it’s a greenhouse, a protected environment for plants. Near the doors there are orderly, neat plots for fruits and vegetables; here, near the back of the structure, live the ornamental things, and she had been at a loss to understand why the whole space hadn’t been devoted to growing food.

She knows about flowers and the pollination process and petals falling away to reveal tiny fruits, tiny things that could grow, and become ingredients in bread and stew and many other things.

A grave, gentle explanation from Leia, talking about the purely ornamental plants propped up in their trellises and rickety frameworks: “Flowers mean that plants reproduce, you know that: but flowers also mean that minds are refreshed. They give off scents that bring our memories back to us. They bloom and the colors catch our eyes.”

“I remember a little yellow flower that I only saw twice, maybe three times, in the Jakku deserts,” Rey had replied, nodding her understanding. 

Now she meditates on the shapes of those little yellow flowers, and again she catches a glimpse of blue at the edges of her vision.

A fallen flower, near her boot, and she stoops. She carefully brushes the acid-reek of the soil from its stained petals. A glowing white in her hand, a dozen pointed petals, and she stays on her haunches. She offers the flower over her shoulder without looking. “Master Qui-Gon. I know you’re there.”

She expects him to say, _Good work, Rey._

She expects him to say, _I came to see how your garden was doing. Places like these hum with the Force._

She expects him to say, _What would you like to talk about today?_

She’s not expecting the actual voice that speaks to her, nor the sudden hook of faint familiar recognition that snags at her breastbone and makes her gasp: “Rey.”

She leaps to her feet and the flower falls back into the soil. 

The presence before her, tinged in blue around the edges. A craggy face at once young and old. He could almost have been Luke Skywalker if not for the height, if not for the nose, if not for the tears in his eyes. 

Real tears, on a man who is almost real.

“You’re not -- ” she begins, and when the man shakes his head, takes a half-step forward, she pulls back. She reaches for her staff --

“Rey,” the man says again. “I shouldn’t be here. I’m sorry.” He turns away, he starts to fade -- 

And she catches her breath on another name. Its syllables sticking in her throat together with the questions that neither Master Qui-Gon nor Luke can ever really answer. 

A name, and a title.

And she wants to reach out, wants to run away, and all she says is, “Grandfather.”

With his back still turned to her, she can see the weight that bows his shoulders. “Maybe don’t call me that,” he says, “because I don’t think I deserve it.”

Questions crowding on her tongue, clamoring just behind her teeth. 

She lunges forward and catches the man’s hand. Rough skin beneath her fingertips, that’s something they might have in common. “Master Obi-Wan,” she says.

“No. Not that either. And you will not call me by the name that frightens you. Don’t call me _Ben_. Call me _Kenobi_ instead.”

“Master Kenobi,” Rey says.

A sigh. “That will do.” And: “Rey. Granddaughter.” 

She’s about to reach for him again when he adds one more word that sends her almost to her knees.

“Dearest.”

The greenhouse and its colors dissolve into the wash of her tears, the greens and the whites and the reds running together, and the harsh planes in her visitor’s face. 

“There aren’t enough words in the languages of the galaxy to tell you, Rey, that I wish I’d been there for you.”

“Are you going to leave me again?” And Rey covers her face with her hands, and sobs.

“No. No, I won’t. I’ll be here, so long as you’re willing to tolerate my presence.” Again Kenobi bows his head -- but this time he draws closer. This time he touches her shoulder. 

She turns her face into his chest, and weeps.


	3. desert winds

Somewhere on the Resistance base, a wall-mounted chrono display begins to toll its slow steady alarm, and Rey, startled, clenches her hands into fists for a long moment. Grit in the corners of her eyes, sleepless stiffness in her rigid shoulders. 

_Whoopwhoopwhoo_ goes BB-8 at her feet. The droid is perched atop a mobile charging station. Why it’s here with her, she has no idea, and there’s no Poe Dameron on the base for her to send its round rolling orange-outlined contours to.

By the time he gets back from his extended patrols she’ll be on a mission of her own. First of many, as Leia had promised: and her words prickle under Rey’s skin. “Tatooine isn’t safe any more, not for the likes of us. I need someone who knows deserts and knows how to navigate hostile places quietly.” 

These are words of caution, these are words of care, and Rey accepts that responsibility happily. She knows little of other planets, of other systems: but sand and dunes and the myriad predators, she knows them in her bones and in her blood. And the General knows about this, is willing to use her. Rey has no qualms with being her instrument. 

Though it _does_ rankle, just a bit, that she won’t be allowed to take her staff along with her. Blasters only, some very light and very battered body armor, and her own wits. 

Oh, and this ship that she’s standing next to: it’s a sleek single-seater craft, all elongated points and dull gray paint. The cockpit is at the front and the rest of the starfighter flows back from it. Flared wings, turbolaser guns at the ends of the wings, a repeating blaster in its retractable mount in the undercarriage. Enough space for an astromech droid -- she’ll be issued one in a few hours -- 

BB-8 chirps again, and Rey glances at the simulator gear that she’d left behind on its little cart several hours ago, and reaches for the training helmet. She knows how to fly this thing, now, but it can’t hurt to keep practicing -- 

The Force ripples around her, softly flowing along her skin.

“You’re up late,” and the voice is gently chiding, gently worried.

When Master Kenobi puts his hand on her shoulder she leans up into the touch, but she doesn’t look up from the helmet. “I have to fly a mission today.”

“A mission with specific objectives, if it means you have to fly it, when you’re supposed to be training.”

“Luke had objections.” Rey sighs, and turns around, and tries to smile at her grandfather. “And Leia agreed with some of those objections, and asked me to fly the mission anyway.” 

“You look tired, dearest.” Heavy brows furrow into a kind frown.

“Nightmares,” Rey says, shortly. “Sometimes I can sleep when I’m next to Finn. But not all the time.”

Master Kenobi’s mouth purses into a thin tight line. “Would that there was any way I could help you.”

“You’re -- you’re helping me,” she says, after a moment. “You and Master Qui-Gon. Some nights I try to meditate.”

“I’d like to hear about that,” Master Kenobi says, and she sits down on the cart, and makes room for him. 

It means they’re squeezed against each other, shoulder to shoulder, and she wants to reach out and take his hand. Instead she sets the helmet aside and laces her fingers together. “Master Qui-Gon says I should try to sit in or near the greenhouse and _feel_ the plants as they grow, as they put out their leaves and flowers and fruits.”

Master Kenobi nods, encouraging. “Go on.”

“And sometimes I don’t want to sit with the plants. They’re so hard to understand. They’re distracting. So I study -- your old holos instead. Your fighting form. They called you a master of defense.”

“The form I am most familiar with is -- it keeps you alive, but it can wear you out, and then you miss the point of defending yourself in the first place. Better to defend yourself just long enough for your opponent to make a mistake, to underestimate you -- then you switch to something else, you attack and do your best to prevail -- ” He trails off. “I don’t mean to lecture.”

“I need to learn everything I can,” Rey says. “Not for this mission. I can’t carry a saber with me.”

“Since they don’t want you to call attention to yourself.”

“No staff, either.” Rey allows herself to pout. Even leaving that weapon behind, propped up in the corner between her bunk and the wall, had been a wrench. 

“Again, dearest, it’s so that you stand a better chance of not being recognized.”

“And the moment I reach for the Force I’ll reveal myself, and so much for hiding.” 

She grins when Master Kenobi snorts. 

And then there’s a brief touch to her brow, cool and fleeting and gentle. “Then it is well that you can remember living without the Force, don’t you think?”

She thinks about that. Then: “I’m supposed to be retrieving something from the Jundland Wastes.”

The presence next to her startles. “That would put you in reach of my old haunts.”

She takes his hand, then. “I can bring your things back.”

A sigh. “If you can find anything, you certainly have my leave to try. But we know about the desert, you and I, don’t we?”

She squeezes his hand, and nods.

“I would have liked to have gone with you for this mission,” he continues, after a moment. “Tatooine is -- I still think of it as a seedy spaceport writ large.”

“With dragons.” Rey thinks of the briefing materials that BB-8, bobbing contentedly next to her, had allowed her to peruse.

“The dragons were never really a problem,” Master Kenobi says. “If you left them alone they’d leave you alone. Everything else, however -- ”

“If I think of everything and everyone out there as Unkar Plutt I might just survive,” Rey says, and she’s wry and self-deprecating and the presence next to her chuckles, only a little bitterly.

“See to it that you do, dearest, I’d be quite put out if you showed up on -- my side of the Force.”

She glances at him. “Something else I’ll have to learn.”

“And hopefully not need to use for a very long time,” is the reply, with special emphasis on the last four words. 

Time ticks past on the chrono, and Rey counts down in her head, and when she reaches zero BB-8 bleats a quiet warning at her. 

“I wish I were flying with you,” Rey tells the droid. 

Temperamental shrilling complaint. 

“I know. You have to stay here and be good for Poe and Finn. And with luck I’ll see you all again very soon.” She gets to her feet and scrubs warmth into her arms. “Grandfather,” she says, trying to smile.

“May the Force be with you, dearest,” Master Kenobi says.


	4. the good kind of surrounded

She wakes up, and bulkheads swim into view.

She wakes up, and the thin blankets smell faintly like smoke and torn bottle-leaf, and that’s how she knows where she is: Chewbacca likes the smell of bottle-leaf and keeps a handful of tiny seedlings in tiny pots somewhere in a corner of his cramped crew quarters.

Cramped crew quarters on the _Millennium Falcon_ : and she takes a deep breath of many-times-refiltered air. 

The other smell that lingers in the room is the smell of bacta.

Her injuries come flooding back into recollection: the absolute searing pain of nearly getting her foot cut off -- she bolts upright, nearly bangs her head on the wall next to the bunk -- she has to see -- 

“Rey. It’s all right. You didn’t lose your foot. You won’t be losing it any time soon, either.”

Weight on her shoulders. Ghost-weight. A hand tinged faintly in blue. A familiar voice.

She turns her head, and --

Oh.

She’s never seen them in the same place before.

She makes an effort to bow, and a sharp pain shoots up her left side when she does so, and she jerks back upright with a quiet series of curses.

Flickering in the corner, and a raised eyebrow. “That is -- impressive, I have to admit.”

“Master Qui-Gon,” Rey says. She feels the flush creep up into her cheeks. “I -- I heard things like that pretty often. There were these Rodians who came to Niima Outpost -- ”

“Say no more. I do not judge. It is just that I have not heard some of those phrases before.”

“And you’ve been around a long time,” says that warm familiar voice. “Rey. You had us worried there for a moment.”

She looks up into her grandfather’s eyes. “I had to save the others.”

“And you did a masterful job. I only wish that you had not been so grievously injured in the process.” Obi-Wan Kenobi’s shoulders move: a sigh, and a shrug, and resignation in both movements. “But then again, it _might_ be a little too much to expect manners from those gangs that you dealt with.”

She’s about to say something about protecting the others, when the other part of his statement comes through, and she feels her eyes widen. “The mission. The things we were sent to retrieve -- we were missing a few important bits -- did we get them all?”

She watches them exchange a look, and bursts out with, “What did I miss?”

“Rest easy,” Master Qui-Gon says, holding up a translucent hand. “In the last exchange, you managed to seriously disable one of the gang leaders, and then your companions came and finished off the other three.”

“As for the plans, ask this one,” Master Kenobi says.

A long inquisitive whistle that also sounds worried, judging from the trill at the end: and BB-8 is peering into the room.

Rey can’t help but smile at its cheerful orange markings, though some of them are dinged and scratched in parts. “Did you get everything?”

High triumphant affirmative.

New starfighter designs. If the Resistance has those plans then they can try to prevent the First Order from building them. She’d love to fly at least one of the prototypes. 

She smiles and then suddenly she feels so tired: so she lets herself fall back into the bottle-leaf-scented blankets. 

Now she can smell the faint underlying tang of spilled iron and rust and she shivers, and tries to raise her leg.

Dark lines on her skin, just above where her ankle is. It’s a relief to wiggle her toes. 

“If I may make a recommendation,” Master Qui-Gon says. “What do you know of the healing trance?”

She squirms. Her shoulder itches. Even when she scratches at it she can get no relief. “I can’t concentrate right now,” she admits, after a moment.

“One of us can guide you into it, if you wish,” Master Kenobi murmurs. “Since there is nothing at the moment that needs your attention.”

Rey shakes her head, and glances at BB-8. “Are the others all right?”

A complicated story of trill and whistle and bleat. 

“He did what?” She almost laughs. “Of course he did. Of course they did.”

“Your companions are more than capable,” Master Qui-Gon says, “when it comes to a fight, it seems.”

“And I am all for them using underhanded tactics, for reasons that should be quite clear to those of us in this room,” Master Kenobi says. “Whatever it takes to keep you alive, dearest.”

Rey gratefully takes his hand again. “You’re not going to tell me to tell Finn off?”

“He knows things that _we_ don’t. I’ll take every advantage we can get.” But there are lines of concern in her grandfather’s face. 

“Perhaps a few suggestions to Master Skywalker might be in order,” Master Qui-Gon murmurs.

“I agree. I hope we’ll have a chance to speak to him soon.”

“Someone is coming,” Master Qui-Gon says.

“We’ll be here,” Master Obi-Wan promises, and Rey wants to keep holding on to his hand -- but Poe Dameron is bursting into the room and he looks like a long drink of water after a day and a night on the baking sands. 

She can’t help but lean on him, when he half-falls onto the bed and wraps his arms around her. “Rey, what the hell, please don’t do anything like that again, don’t make me and Finn worry -- ”

She shakes her head and clutches at his shoulders. Tears prickling at the corners of her eyes. “I’ll do better next time.”

“We’ll try to find a way,” he says, almost insistent. “I don’t want us getting into a situation like that ever again. You nearly gave me a conniption.” She feels the desperation of the kiss that he presses to her temple. “Just -- just come back alive, that’s all he and I ask. We need you. You know that.”

She’s nodding and holding back her sobs when something beeps: and Poe pulls away, just far enough to hold a commlink up between the two of them. “Talk to me, Finn.”

“Rey, as fun as it is to fly this thing, it’s not the same without you.” Finn sounds a little distracted. She can’t blame him. The _Falcon_ is both needy and temperamental; it takes a lot of concentration to watch all of the boards and make sure they keep glowing green. “It’s a job that needs three people. You and me and Poe.”

She has to speak around the emotions with their sharp edges, pressing beautifully against her heart. “I’m sorry I made you worry.”

“No apologies.”

And she blinks because both Poe and Finn say the exact same words at the exact same time. 

“Just -- maybe we can make better plans, plans that don’t fall apart the moment someone fires a blaster,” Finn says.

“That’s what I said, buddy,” Poe says.

“You should get here,” Rey murmurs, and she is so, so grateful for these two -- as well as for the other two who are now out of her sight, but never far away.

“As soon as we land, they’ll have to pry us both off of you.”

Poe finally laughs, watery and sweet. “That’s a promise.”

**Author's Note:**

> And yes, I know very well that the next part of the trilogy will kill my Rey-is-a-Kenobi theory stone-cold dead. I'm still going to write it :)
> 
> \-----
> 
> Come talk to me about Rey Kenobi on [tumblr](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
